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The Oedipus Plays

Sophocles

Antigone, lines 701–1090

Oedipus the King, lines 1–337

Summary

A boy leads in Tiresias, the blind soothsayer of Thebes.
Creon swears that he will obey whatever advice Tiresias gives him,
since he owes so much to his past advice. Tiresias tells him that
his refusal to bury Polynices and his punishment of Antigone for
the burial will bring the curses of the gods down on Thebes. Hearing
this, Creon curses Tiresias, calling him a false prophet who traffics
in poor advice and rhetoric. Creon accuses all prophets of being
power-hungry fools, but Tiresias turns the insult back on tyrants
like Creon. The old prophet argues that the rites for the dead are
the concern of the gods—mortals can rule only in this world. Unwilling
to hear any more abuse, Tiresias has his boy lead him away. The
Chorus is terrified by Tiresias’s prophecy. Creon admits that he
too is worried and will do whatever the citizens recommend. They
call for him to free Antigone, and he reluctantly leaves to do so.
Once he is gone, the Chorus prays to Dionysus to protect Thebes.

A messenger enters and tells the Chorus that a catastrophic
event has taken place offstage: Haemon is dead by his own hand.
As the messenger is leaving, Eurydice, Creon’s wife, enters from
the palace. She has overheard the commotion caused by the messenger’s announcement
and asks the messenger to tell her what has happened. He reports
that just as Creon and his entourage had finished their burial of
Polynices, they heard what sounded like Haemon’s voice wailing from
Antigone’s tomb. They went in and saw Antigone hanging from a noose
and Haemon raving. Creon’s son then took a sword and thrust it at
his father. Missing, he turned the sword against himself, and died
embracing Antigone’s body.

Hearing that Haemon is dead, Eurydice rushes back into
the palace, followed by the messenger. Creon then enters, carrying
Haemon’s body and wailing against his own tyranny, which caused
his son’s death. Just then the messenger emerges and tells the king
that the queen has committed suicide, brought to unbearable misery
by her son’s death. Creon weeps and raves wildly as Eurydice’s body
is brought forth from the palace. The messenger tells Creon that
Eurydice called down curses on her husband for the misery his pride
had caused just before she stabbed herself. Creon kneels and prays
for death. His guards lead him back into the palace. The Chorus
sings a final ode about how the proud are brought low by the gods.

Analysis

Throughout the play, Creon has emphasized the importance
of “healthy” practical judgment over a sick, twisted mind, but Tiresias informs
Creon that practical judgment is precisely what he lacks—only Creon
has a sick and twisted mind. When the catastrophes occur, the messenger
directly points to the moral that the worst ill afflicting mortals
is a lack of judgment (1373).
We may well wonder what use judgment is given the limitations of
human beings and the inescapable will of the gods. Perhaps the best
explanation is that possessing wisdom and judgment means acknowledging
human limitations and behaving piously so as not to actually call
down the gods’ wrath. Humans must take a humble, reverential attitude toward
fate, the gods, and the limits of human intelligence. At the end
of the play, Creon shows he has learned this lesson at last when, instead
of mocking death as he has throughout the play, he speaks respectfully
of “death” heaping blows upon him (1413–1419).

Even though Antigone exhibits a blamable pride and a hunger for
glory, her transgressions are less serious than those of Creon. Antigone’s
crime harms no one directly, whereas Creon’s mistakes affect an
entire city. We learn from Tiresias that new armies are rising up
in anger against Thebes because of Creon’s treatment of their dead
(1201–1205).
More important, Creon’s refusal to bury Polynices represents a more
radical affront to human values than Antigone’s refusal to heed
Creon’s edict. Creon says at the beginning of the play that the
sight of Polynices’ unburied corpse is an obscenity (231),
but he clearly doesn’t understand the implications of his own words.
Whereas Antigone breaks a law made by a particular ruler in a particular
instance, a law that he could have made differently, Creon violates
an unwritten law, a cultural custom.

The Chorus’s final speech is a remarkably terse list of
possible lessons that can be learned from the play’s events: wisdom
is good, reverence for the gods is necessary, pride is bad, and
fate is inevitable (1466–1470).
The Chorus claims that the punishing blows of fate will teach men
wisdom, but it is hard to feel convinced by their words: Creon’s
“wisdom”—his understanding of his crimes—seems, much like Oedipus’s,
only to have brought him more pain. And Haemon, Antigone, and Eurydice
can learn nothing more, now that they are dead. The Chorus, like
the audience, struggles to find purpose in violence, though it is
not clear that there is any purpose to be found.